Airbag
by xChewy
Summary: Mountain roads are a bad place to pick a fight with the driver. Johnny Centric, character death, hints at Mariah/Johnny.


Title failure. ;o; I don't know why I suddenly like the Majestics. :/ I really don't.

… Actually, I blame you, Macy. D: And to show you how much I hate you for it, I'm dedicating this to you.

(jk ily)

**ANYWAY**: Character death warning, violence, vaguely described gore. (I think vague is the right term. Hm.) Happy ending though, kinda?

If you've never seen Entourage, then you won't get this, but…

JOHNNY DRAMA

:'D

Had to. Sorry. Enjoy!

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

"I'm not trying to tell you why you're wrong, I'm trying to tell you why _I'm_ right."

"But you're _not_. That's the problem."

"It's an opinion! I can't be wrong about an opinion, Lee."

"You certainly can. You just don't know what you're talking about."

A disgusted sigh, followed promptly by Johnny speaking softly to himself. "How did I end up in this car to begin with?"

Lavender eyes pulled away from the back of the front seat in the car, where they had been glued for the past ten minutes. They trailed around the interior of the SUV, shifting from face to face.

Rick had jumped shotgun just as they were leaving. His strong form remained still, arms crossed over his chest, and with his downcast eyes, he had managed to stay out of the confrontation completely. Johnny looked at him with a bit of disdain before his eyes glanced back at the rear-view mirror, catching a quick glimpse of Lee's hard golden eyes. The leader of the White Tigers was focused on the road, no longer interested in talking.

Johnny's eyes continued on their peregrination. There were only four people in the car, and when he finally settled his glance on the last person, he was almost surprised to find that he hadn't been paying attention at all.

Kevin was staring out the window, looking like he was so lost in thought that he might never find his way back to reality. It was almost laughable, how small he was compared to the rest of the people in the car. Johnny only regarded him for a moment, considering that perhaps he was used to Lee bickering with people. Maybe it he could tune it out like white noise. If he had noticed Johnny looking at him, he didn't make any effort to return the attention.

"Can you drive any faster?" Rick said suddenly, looking toward Lee. Johnny looked away from the small neko-jin at the sound of it, curious to see the response. Lee rolled his eyes.

"No, I cannot. We're going fast enough as it is."

"Yeah, well, I'm tired of being in the same car as you losers."

"Oh, like you're amazing company," Johnny laughed. Rick refused to look back at him, but snorted with some sort of laughter.

"And you are? All you two have been doing is fighting."

"Did you fail to recognize the silence that we just had? That's not fighting." Lee was saying. He sounded surprisingly calm, but the corners of his voice were tight with irritation.

"Yeah, well it would have been quieter sooner if you two had just shut up."

"Look who's starting an argument now," Lee said, this time more irritably. Johnny glanced over at Kevin, but the youngest was still staring out the window. The Scot looked at him a minute, interested by his lack of interest, until Rick turned sharply in his seat and glared at Lee. Needless to say, the swift action reclaimed Johnny's attention.

"All I asked is if you would hurry up. I don't see how that's so hard."

"Well excuse me, _I_ don't want to have an accident."

"Je-sus, is that all?" Rick growled, "I should have figured. Asians can't drive."

"Rick!" Lee snapped. It sounded more like a warning than anything else, but before Johnny could chime in, he noticed movement to his right. Kevin had glanced away from the glass at the outburst, looking blankly toward Lee. Johnny glanced over at the small form with a raised eyebrow.

"_Why_ am I not surprised that the stereotype is true?" Rick was saying, rolling his eyes and tossing his hands up. Lee tightened his grip on the wheel and slowed the car down out of spite, earning a dark glare from the American.

"Oh, you think you're funny?" He started, but Johnny tuned him out. Taking advantage of the brief moment of focus Kevin was offering, he leaned over and prodded him in the arm. The green head of hair turned toward him lethargically, his rich violet eyes meeting up with the pale lavender ones. After a brief pause, when it became obvious Kevin wasn't going to say anything, Johnny allowed himself a half smile and spoke.

"You hear crap like this a lot?" He asked, suddenly feeling a bit foolish for offering up the conversation. To his surprise, though, the look of distraction fell from Kevin's face when the younger rolled his eyes.

"Most of the time, _I'm_ the one arguing with him," He replied, his voice almost a whisper behind the yelling in the front seat. Johnny's smile widened a bit, his eyes lifting up to look out he window on the other side of Kevin. They were on a mountain road, on a hillside somewhere. The tall trees that whipped past gave way, up ahead, to a connecting road that ran perpendicular to the road they were speeding along. His eyes connected with a red truck, coming toward the three-point intersection ahead, and he followed it while he spoke.

"So you're so used to it that you just don't care anymore?"

The red truck kept moving, closing in on the though it seemed, it almost appeared like it wasn't slowing down.

"Nah, it doesn't matter. Rick is a jerk anyway, so I figured it would happen."

Johnny sat up a little, eyes focusing more on the truck now. It was moving pretty fast for being that close to the turn.

"Hey, you okay?" Kevin was asking, leaning back as Johnny sat up right. The truck wasn't slowing down.

"Hey, Lee?" Johnny said, ignoring Kevin who, after a moment, turned and looked out the window himself. It took him a minute to notice the truck, and a minute longer to recognize it wasn't slowing down. In that time, Johnny had gone ignored once and turned fully toward the front.

"Lee, the truck!" He snapped, cutting into the argument between Lee and Rick. Lee glanced back at him and then looked ahead of the car, rather than to his right where the truck was coming from. There was a pause, when confused silence took hold of the air around them, before Kevin turned his attention away from the window. When Johnny looked toward him, the truck was three feet away from Rick's window, coming on just as fast as it had been way back at the start of the road.

"Lee!"

Kevin's cry was the last human noise Johnny registered. Before his young voice could even die away, the red truck struck the passenger side of the SUV head-on, crunching the frame inward and lurching the vehicle sharply to the left. It skid, Lee trying to remain in control for another minute before both truck and SUV careened off the mountain road. The decline on the left side of the strip of asphalt dropped, through trees and brush, clear down to a wide creek, and there was nothing strong enough to stop either vehicle as they rolled down the hill. Glass shattered, metal and steal twisted, and the engine crunched up against a tree on the way down.

It rolled eight times, finally coming to a stop in the middle of the creek bed. It was on it's side, the passenger side up in the air though dented inward terribly. The red truck came to a stop a few yards away, upside down with it's cab crushed in beyond recognition. The echo of the crash ripped through the river canyon and sent birds flying from their perches in nearby trees, before a terrible silence engulfed the wreckage.

-x-x-x-

Johnny flinched, his eyes closing tightly against something cold that was brushing against him. It was spreading, slowly, down his torso and around him, only creeping an inch or so up his skin from where he was lying flat on the ground. Carefully, his eyes opened to reveal darkness, and then eventually, light. He strained to differentiate between the two for a short while, eventually recognizing that he was inside of something.

There was an unnatural weight on his chest. He lifted an arm up from the cold that had covered the floor and tried to move the thing off of himself, but it just rolled back into it's place. It was small, whatever it was. And not metal. His eyes traveled downward, but they only found colors. Peach, green, red. It looked like someone had thrown them onto a canvas without thought, but as the blurriness drained from his vision, shadows began to creep across the colors, defining what looked like a nose, a mouth, and eyes closed as if in sleep. The red was splattered across the face as it formed before him, coming from a gash on the forehead that led from the corner of an eyebrow all the way back beyond the hairline. It seemed to stop somewhere around an ear, but as the hair took shape, Johnny stopped caring about all the red. He recognized what he was looking at.

"K-..." He tried, struggling a minute to compose himself. He tried to push himself up, but as his arms rolled back against the ground, an agonizing cry erupted from his mouth. A white hot jolt of pain shot into his mid-back, as though someone had stabbed a poker into him. The cry drowned out into a groan, and as he clenched his teeth, that too faded into ragged breathing. Paranoid about his next move, Johnny fell still for a time, looking at the face.

"Kevin," He heard himself say, his voice strained but louder than he had expected. The neko-jin was lying half on top of him, one arm sprawled out before him while the other was lying over Johnny's chest. Kevin's face pressed against the v-line of Johnny's neck, almost like he had snuggled up to him.

Johnny rolled his head away from the younger male and tried to look toward the front of the SUV. He could see a figure, hanging from the passenger seat with his arms dangling. The seatbelt had held him there, but something was off about the way Rick's neck looked. Something was just a little off.

The Scotsman blinked several times, looking away reluctantly when he heard a frail groan escape the boy on top of him. Lavender eyes looked searchingly toward him, wondering now about how close either of them were to death. Johnny didn't feel that injured. Beside his back, and Kevin's weight, he could hardly feel a thing.

"Ggh..."

"Kevin." Johnny tried again, this time lifting his other arm. He hardly felt a pain in his back when he pushed his palm against the side of Kevin's chest. A gentle heartbeat, like a baby kicking in the womb, was the only thing to respond for a moment before Kevin's right eye blinked open very slowly. The left eye was covered in blood, having been directly in the stream of red that poured from his head wound.

He said something, in a shaking tone. Johnny nudged him with his palm. "What? Kid, I..." Johnny started. He rolled his head to the side a bit, too afraid to lift it up unless it hurt his back. He looked up beyond Kevin, through the missing window on the far side of the car, above them. For a moment, as Kevin composed himself, Johnny stared blankly through it before he noticed his own leg, twisted up in a seat belt, obviously broken.

"... OnStar..." Kevin breathed, retracted the arm that had been laid out on Johnny's chest and pulling it closer to himself. Johnny narrowed his eyes a moment, not comprehending what he was saying.

"W-... what? Kid, I... We gotta get out of here." He growled, jaw tight in pain. Carefully, he lifted his other arm, growling through the pain in his back, and tried to get his hands under Kevin's arms to roll him off. Kevin moaned, weakly trying to move out of Johnny's hands, but in the time it took him to make any slight progress, Johnny had forced himself out through the small hole behind him; it was all that was left of the window on his side. His leg caught for a terrible moment, still twisted up in the seatbelt, but with another two tries it came free with a painful snap.

He wasn't sure how much noise he was making. All he allowed himself to focus on was pushing himself out of the car, and getting Kevin out with him. The small boy dragged in his grip, but his body was light and didn't provide much difficulty in getting him out. Johnny fell back, finally free from the confines of the crushed car. Water splashing up around them; it was about a foot deep, and ice cold against his skin. That must have been the cold that he woke up to; it was seeping into the car from whatever entrance it could, faster now that they were out of the way of the window.

By sheer force of will, Johnny managed to drag the smaller body across the shallow water to the bank, along with his limp leg. Exhausted and hardly breathing due to the pain, he collapsed against the damp soil, gasping for air.

Silence caught up with him, finally. Time passed by unnoticed, accompanying him as he stared blankly up at the trees, towering peacefully overhead. Eventually, he rolled onto his side and bit back another groan of pain, eyes falling on the small form that he had dragged from the wreckage.

"... Kid." He whispered, nudging Kevin's shoulder pathetically. His arm was definitely broken, and that head injury... But his chest rose and fell consistently. Johnny's eyes started to feel heavy as he watched the life slowly drain from Kevin's forehead, only vaguely aware of the irritating noise that was growing louder and louder, until he could swear he saw something red and blue flashing off the tall tree trunks above him.

-x-x-x-

Golden light radiated off of the walls and surfaces around him, complimenting the otherwise dull colors on the hospital roof. White sheets on lines swayed in the evening breeze, their translucent billowing shadows dancing across the ground and stopping at his feet. Like water, they swayed over the metal and plastic of his crutches, making them look _almost_ appealing. Like a commercial.

But Johnny's eyes weren't focused on them. He was staring blankly out at the tree line, miles away on the horizon. Something about being able to see the forest he almost died in put everything in retrospect for him.

Somewhere behind him, he could hear the door to the roof opening. He dropped his gaze down at his casted leg, propped stiffly out before him at an angle.

"Johnny?" Came a soft voice. He turned only enough to see the figure in his peripheral vision before looking away again. Great, just the girl he _didn't_ want to see.

Mariah sat down beside him, about three feet away. The air conditioning unit whirred softly beneath their weight, adding to the silence between them.

"They're looking for you, you know."

Silence. He was waiting for it, waiting for what she was going to say. What he _knew_ she was going to say.

"... I bet if you leave a note, they would leave you alone. You know... next time."

Next time. Johnny could have laughed. But he didn't; he just kept waiting for her to say it.

She sighed, relaxing suddenly and pushing her palms against the cool steel. Her silence began to sink into his flesh, making him uneasy and sending a shiver up his spine. Turning toward her suddenly, he glared at her directly and clenched his teeth.

"Would you just come out and say it already?" He snapped. It surprised her, as she jumped and leaned away, eyes looking up at him in a bewildered sense.

"What?"

"Say it! You have every right to do it, so just get it over with!"

"Johnny, say _what_?" She asked. Her voice was disturbingly quiet, and held a motherly ring to it. He looked at her with wild eyes before he reluctantly set his jaw and turned away.

"Nothing. Never mind."

"... Johnny."

"No, just go away. Okay? _Piss off_."

His venomous tone did nothing to deter her. She slid toward him, about a foot, and leaned in while he leaned away. He refused to look at her.

"... It's not your fault, Johnny."

His eye twitched, growing darker beneath his sinking eyebrows. The setting sun crept through the sky toward the forest, as if it were threatening to bring him back there.

"You weren't even driving."

"I saw that damn truck coming." He growled, turning toward her sharply. She shook her head.

"It doesn't matter."

"They're dead!"

Johnny's words seemed to finally hit a nerve with the pink haired girl. She blinked several times, her eyes dropping away from his, and there was a long moment of silence. He watched her for a minute before he began to regret it.

"I-... I didn't mean to..."

"No. It's okay," She said. her voice hardly a whisper. "I know."

His eyes didn't falter. The anger melted off of his face slowly, and he heaved a sigh, dropping his eyes to his lap. They stayed that way for a while before Mariah spoke.

"The doctor said Kevin could wake up any day now."

Johnny felt himself nodding. "That's good."

"... You should see him." She muttered, her eyes lifting toward him again. He refused to return the look, however much he wanted to.

"I can't."

"It's been two months. It might help."

He didn't say anything. Desperately, she eased toward him again, this time right up along side him so that their hips were almost touching. Carefully, she struck out her hand until her fingers brushed against his palm. She rested her hand in his then, and looked down at her feet.

"It's just... now that you can walk again, I thought you might... I mean..." Her voice dropped off to a whisper again. "You saved his life."

Johnny closed his eyes. "Don't do that," he sighed. "Don't make me out to be a hero."

"He would have drowned if you had left him in the car." Mariah said, her voice suddenly solid and stern. She whipped her head around toward him, aggravated at his modestly. "Don't act like that's not a big fucking deal."

Johnny looked at her with something akin to apathy written on his face. He blinked a few times, unaware of the smile that was tugging at his lips, but even when he noticed it he did nothing to stop it.

"That's _funny_?" Mariah growled, pupils narrowing into slits as her hand retracted from his. He shook his head and dropped his gaze to his lap, chuckling.

"Alright," he sighed, laughter evident even with only the one word.

Mariah glared at him, contemplating ramming her hand into his back and condemning him to another month of bed rest. Before she could act on the urge, however, he looked up toward her with that stupid smile, his eyes watering.

"I'll go see him when he wakes up."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

bfjbnafb whatever i don't even know anymore. D:

Please review?


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